


All Your Edges

by fallovermelikestars



Series: I Love It When You Prompt Me [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Lie Low At Lupin's, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-18 17:57:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2357039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallovermelikestars/pseuds/fallovermelikestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Batshit crazy' Sirius says and Remus pouts. 'And that face won't work on me. You are absolutely batshit crazy. And I'm not doing it.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Your Edges

**Author's Note:**

> Starting off as a prompt from the (rather excellent) AU fic meme over on tumblr (where I also go by fallovermelikestars - come say hey) this was supposed to be a lighthearted few hundred word ficlet and accidentally became 3000 words of Lie Low at Lupin-esque feels. I have no idea how that happened. 
> 
>  
> 
> Title stolen from the legend that is John Legend.

Batshit crazy' Sirius says and Remus pouts. 'And that face won't work on me. You are absolutely batshit crazy. And I'm not doing it.'

'There's no need to be so....aggressive about it.'

'Aggressive' Sirius almost yells. 'I'm...this is not aggressive. This is me, telling you quite calmly, that you are batshit crazy.'

'I rather think you're being a tad unreasonable.' Remus leans back in his armchair, barely able to keep the smile off his face as he watches his friend pace the kitchen (that really is too small for anything much more than standing) and turn, fixing Remus with a stunned stare.

'In case you've forgotten, Moony, I am supposed to be _on the run_ ' he shakes his head, _'lie low at Lupin's_ Dumbledore said, _you'll be safe there_ he said, _you could do with being around someone with a bit of common sense_ he said. I don't know what happened to you over the past twelve years but I'm damned if I understand how I've become the sensible one.'

'You're ranting.'

'I don't understand how you've translated _'lie low'_ into 'accompany me to a damn wedding and pretend to be my boyfriend.'

'I’m trying not to be offended by the fact that being my boyfriend is so repellent an idea to you.'

He aims for lighthearted and misses. Sirius growls.

'You're an absolute tosser.'

Remus sighs as the door slams close and the heavy thud of Sirius's angry footsteps on the stairs seems to make the whole house shake.

It's so frustrating and he doesn't know what to do about it, but it feels like all they've done since Sirius arrived, under-nourished and with a hollow look in his eyes, is fight. They've fought more in the last few weeks than they fought at all, before. The realisation makes something settle, hollow and unwanted in the pit of his stomach.

He was never naive enough to think it would be so simple as picking up where they left off. Too much has happened and too much time has passed for that, too much pain on both sides.

He'd never expected this either.

Maybe it's being stuck here together with no place else to go: Sirius likely feels like he's gone from one cage to another and he never did do well when confined to small spaces before all this, never mind now, and Remus has been alone for so long that he no longer knows how to share his space. Especially with Sirius. Sirius who he’s loved since before he even really understood what love meant, even though he was never brave enough to say itout loud.

It hurts. Having him here; wanting him but not wanting him; knowing him but at the same time not recognising him at all and the guilt threatens to engulf him some days. He catches Sirius stood looking out of the window on occasion, thinner than he should be and holding himself as though the very act of keeping himself upright is a battle and the guilt tastes like bile: he should never have doubted his innocence.

 

: :

'It's a Muggle wedding,' he says a bit later. Sirius had left his bedroom door open and maybe it wasn't an invitation to talk but Remus will take what he can get. He leans against the frame, legs crossed at the ankle and looks at Sirius. He's laid on the bed, hands folded on his stomach and save for the opening of one eye gives no indication that he's listening at all. Remus carries on regardless.

'Nobody would recognise you; my parents won't even be there. You'll be safe and I can apparate us away the second you feel uncomfortable as long as you don't mind a spot of side-along. I thought it might make you feel better, if you could just get out of the house for a while.'

'And the boyfriend part?' Sirius asks but he doesn't open his eye again. Remus is selfishly quite glad; it makes this whole excruciating story easier to tell if he doesn't have to see the pity in Sirius’s eyes.

'I may or may not have told my cousin that I was seeing someone. A serious someone.'

'Me?' The eye does crack open this time and Remus has to resist rolling his. Some things - such as Sirius’s propensity to fish for compliments -maybe don't change after all.

'Well no, obviously not _you_ you. That _would_ be batshit crazy. Just...someone. They asked all the time. Constant _'when are you going to....'_ And so in the end I did. And it didn't matter because I never saw them. Except now there's a wedding which I have to attend because my parents aren't. Since the imaginary boyfriend was so serious, I can hardly turn up without him. His name's on the invite in gold fucking leaf.'

'And if I wasn't here you'd ask who?'

'You are here.' Remus points out, 'so it's hardly relevant.' He runs a tired hand over his face; it's exhausting, this being cooped up all the time, barely getting on, swinging from tip-toeing around each other to out and out screaming. 'It could be fun.'

'Fun.' Sirius says dully, like it's a word that holds no meaning for him now and Remus's heart clenches.

‘The name on the invite. What is it?’

Remus takes a breath. Because somewhere beneath twelve years of hell is his Sirius, and he knows exactly how this is going to go.

‘Herbert.’

‘Herbert.’ Sirius is incredulous. As expected. ‘Something is clearly very wrong with you. You invented a boyfriend and called him _Herbert_? Who does that?’

‘It made me laugh alright. He was never meant to be _real_. What was I supposed to call him? Sirius?’

‘Better that than sodding _Herbert_ , fucking hell.’

‘Will you come?’

‘And be called Herbert? Not bloody likely.’

'Please, Padfoot.'

'Fine.' Sirius says, rolling onto his side with his back to the door. 'Now fuck off.'

 

: :

It’s not that he’s particularly opposed to the idea of going to this goddamn wedding with Remus. Granted, it’s smells to his well-practised nose like a spectacularly bad idea, but he’s hardly a stranger to those. Perhaps that’s part of the problem – the subtle shift in their relationship that’s not that subtle at all: Sirius was always the _bad idea friend_ before and it seems odd that should be a role played by Remus now, because it _is_ a bad idea: Sirius leaving the house is a bad idea, going somewhere as public as a wedding, Muggle or not, is a bad idea and pretending to be Remus’s boyfriend is more akin to catastrophic but still, it’s not that he’s particularly opposed to it. It’s just that….well, he’s not entirely sure he can keep the lines between fiction and reality from blurring.

It had been a careful and well practised dance that Remus and he had done around each other when they were young, in the years _before_. Bi-yearly hook-ups followed by promises not to do it again and declarations of why they could never work – too alike, too different, their friendship too valuable, blah, blah and fucking blah. Stupid really; it’s pretty obvious to Sirius now that their friendship was built on a foundation of attraction. Of love. They couldn’t have ignored it forever. But then the war had started for real, and it had all gone to shit. He’d had to dig deep in Azkaban, past months of his most recent memories, to find the ones where Remus’s smile reached his eyes and there wasn’t a tangible air of mistrust between the two of them.

 _Lie low at Lupin’s_ said Dumbledore, with that smirk on his face, like he knew something that Sirius didn’t. Perhaps he thought they’d just fall into bed like the last twelve years hadn’t happened. Shag each other back to life.  As it is, they barely exist in the same space. Remus’s guilt is practically luminous, misplaced as it is, and Sirius has his own issues to contend with. And then there’s the time. Twelve years is a long time to be apart from the person you love, especially when you never quite got it together in the first place.

Sirius is so lost, and so fucking angry and he’s frustrated: he wants to be out there _doing_ , not sat in Remus’s front room waiting for Voldemort to once again fuck around with all he holds dear. He’s so tightly wound that he feels like he’s constantly a heartbeat away from snapping and every time Remus so much as _looks_ at him, it feels like his heart is trying its damndest to break free from his rib cage. He wants, he wants so _badly_ , and it petrifies him.

Remus isn’t the same as he was back then, he’s less and at the same time more, like a light has gone out in his eyes somehow, a side effect of the weight of twelve years with the people you love either dead or in prison. He’s less ready to smile, to laugh, he’s fragile but tougher despite it than anyone Sirius has ever met; there’s a depth to him that Sirius can’t quite fathom. He wants to. He wants to unravel Remus and find out what makes him tick before carefully putting him back together again, and the thing of it is, is that it’s no longer the person Remus _was_ that has his heart aching, it’s the man that he has become. Sirius loves every single version of him.

And Remus? Remus just wants a fake boyfriend.

He doesn't know why he expected anything more. He hadn't expected anything more. It had made sense that this was how it was going to be between them - for now at least - this hesitant back and forth at best, angry words and slamming doors at worst. He understood it, he accepted it. It was fine. It was better than fine; it was home.

And then Remus had mentioned this stupid fucking wedding and something bright, like hope, had flickered in a part of Sirius that had lain dormant for so long he had all but forgotten it's very existence. It had taken a split second for the whole scene to come alive before his eyes: Remus's soft eyed smile directed at him; suits that didn't match but complimented; his hand on the small of Remus's back on the dance floor; a kiss under the stars as music played softly behind them.

He's such an idiot. And Remus really is batshit crazy: there is no way they can pull this off. But it matters to Remus and Remus matters to him, so what choice does he have but to try.

 

: :

 

It's easy to forget when you don't see someone for over a decade, (and then when they do come back they're dressed in rags and all but utterly malnourished) just exactly how attractive they are. That's the excuse Remus is giving - and one he intends to stick to - for why his breath catches in his throat when Sirius walks into the room.

He's done something with his hair so it's less of a scraggly mess and more a 'just out of bed' tussle and he's shaved. The suit fits, Remus notes a little smugly, and the tie at his throat is perfectly knotted. He looks as he saunters into the room - and Remus had been worried he'd never see him saunter again - like the Sirius Black Remus he remembers and as he gives a flash of that cocky smile and says _'I scrub up pretty well don't I?'_ Remus wants every stitch of clothing off him yesterday.

He wants to grab him by the hand and drag him upstairs to bed and to not surface again until they've relearnt each other by heart and made up for all the time they've lost.

They were just kids, they didn't know what they had until it was too late, and they didn't give themselves a chance; it's not fair that it was taken away from them before they had chance to figure it out.

Remus has figured it out now, though: he wants, and it's as clear as anything, this man. He wants him for the rest of forever. It feels like a dangerous thing to want though, and Remus's life is dangerous enough. He's just got Sirius back and the balance is delicate, to put it kindly: he's still scared most days that one wrong word could send it call crashing down around them. There's just so many words that neither know how to say, too many demons. It would be stupid to build something on a foundation like that, and that’s assuming Sirius wants to build anything anyway.

'Yes. You scrub up remarkably well,' he says and hopes his smile doesn't look too forced as he holds out a hand for Sirius to take. 'Well fake partner. Shall we?'

 

: :

The wedding, as it happens, is less an exercise in torture that Sirius had expected, and Remus had been right: it’s nice to get out of the house, to spend a few hours under the semblance of _normal_. People smile, and laugh and are more friendly than anybody Sirius has come into contact with in longer than he can remember and the whole time Remus is there by his side, a hand on his waist, a whisper in his ear, long fingers tangling with his and keeping him close. Sirius is almost dizzy with how good it feels, how right. He forgets, almost, that it's _not_ real, let's himself get carried away in shared glances and secret smiles and Remus tugging gently and distractedly at the hairs at the base of his neck.

Remus has relaxed; the tension seems to have gone from his shoulders and his eyes crinkle when he smiles.  He looks beautiful; when they find themselves alone for a moment at the edge of the lawn watching the photographer at work, Sirius can't stop himself from leaning in and stealing a kiss and Remus startles for a beat and then smiles into it, pressing Sirius closer.

'Getting a bit frisky, Herb,' he murmurs against Sirius's lips and Sirius laughs. Presses another loud smacking kiss to Remus's lips and pulls back with a grin.

'You were right. This _is_ fun.'

'I'm always right' Remus is fond, 'You should know this by now.'

He feels like a damn teenager, stood here like this, Remus's fingers still grasping his lapel, and he's just wondering if he could get away with another quick kiss when a delighted voice behind him makes him almost jump out of his skin.

'You two are adorable.'

Sirius rolls his eyes, unable to resist a small smirk at the smile Remus plasters on his face - clearly fake - and turns Sirius around to face a mousy haired girl in a floral dress.

'You must be...' 

'Herbert.' Remus says quickly. Sirius has to swallow down a laugh. Fucking _Herbert._

'But please. Call me Pad.'

The girl looks confused and Remus elbows him in the ribs. This isn't sticking to the script but Sirius really doesn't care. He still has his pride: and he absolutely does not look like a Herbert.

'My middle name's Patrick' he says, thinking fast. 'If you had a name like Herbert you'd come up with a nickname too.'

He fixes the girl with his most dazzling smile and takes her hand, pressing his lips to the back of it, pleased when she giggles and looks away. He still has it, then.

'Its so lovely to meet you. You really are adorable and I've never seen you look this happy Remus, not since we were kids. Pad here has clearly done quite a number on you.'

'He's certainly something special' Remus says and Sirius slips an arm around his waist tugging him closer and pressing a kiss to his hairline.

'Oh come on darling don't be shy. A love like ours should be shared with the _world._ We're soulmates' he whispers confidingly to whichever of Remus's relations he's talking too and letting out a dreamy sigh as she clutches a hand to her chest and smiles at them adoringly. 'It's like I've spent my whole life waiting for him.'

'So romantic.'

'He makes me want to be romantic.' Sirius gushes, 'and' and he leans forward even further, voice dropping ever lower 'he's a _tiger_ in the sack.'

'Sir...iously..Pad!' Remus hisses, 'I'm sorry, we, you must excuse us' and he drags Sirius away by the arm, leaving the girl staring after them jaw dropped.

'What the hell are you doing?'

Sirius is laughing. He can't seem to stop, and he reaches out a finger to smooth away the frown lines on Remus's forehead.

'Oh come on! You have to let me get some amusement out of this whole charade. And it's not like it's not true. That thing you used to do with your tongue....'

'Stop!'

Remus is laughing though and Sirius waggles his eyebrows. It hasn't been this easy in longer than he can remember: even before, for a long time, their every waking moment was tainted with suspicion and fear. It feels good, to stand close, tease, laugh.

'What, you don't think Herbert would say things like that?'

'I know he wouldn't.' Remus says, 'Herbert is a _gentleman_.'

'Sounds like a dullard to me,' he's flirting now, and he can't bring himself to give a damn. He's already been to hell and back; already knows how bad it can be and he thinks he'd be an idiot if the thing he took away from being a prisoner of Azkaban wasn't to live every day as if it were his last. He winks. 'I think it's perfectly tragic that your fake boyfriend is such a bore. Honestly Moony, you'd be better off with me.'

There's a pause then, that seems to stretch on forever. Remus looks at him consideringly, eyes searching Sirius's face like he's looking for answers in the crows feet. Sirius doesn't look away, just holds his gaze and raises an eyebrow. Finally, finally Remus nods his head.

'You're quite right Padfoot. I would.'

**Author's Note:**

> (I just want to say that I have *nothing* against the name Herbert, at all. I just don't think it's very 'Sirius')


End file.
